o take the Major's hand in a
fatherly farewell. After the Major had torn out of the room the
Governor closed the door and stood at the window looking out over the
busy Straits, his face older, stripped of the optimism with which he
invariably confronted all of these young men who were associated with
him in the Moro task. Sometimes it all seemed so hopeless, so futile.

For a long time the Governor stood at the window. He was facing
westward toward India, that mystic ever-ever land that had been the
goal of all the nations since before Columbus and was finally won by
the steady strength and genius of a meager island people. But its
cost--its cost in fair-haired, ruddy-cheeked youth! As in other
matters of government we had learned colonization at Mother England's
knee, had sought to apply her precepts, to avoid her mistakes: but
there was no avoiding that penalty, that expenditure of young men.
Quotations from the interpreter of the white man's burden came to his
lips: "'_The deaths ye have died I have watched beside._'" He
whispered the line over and over again.

He was still gazing somberly over the wide waters when Bronner rushed
down the pier below him and leaped into the cockpit of the power boat.
An orderly followed on the run and dumped the Major's luggage into the
boat. A Moro cast off the restraining hauser and the snowy hull leaped
forward, nose high in the air. When it reached a point opposite where
the Governor stood its stern was buried deep by the terrific thrash of
the screw, and borne on the swift ebb tide it streaked out of sight
into the west, like a thing alive. The Major was off--the Constabulary
guards its own. When one falls, others search, and bury, and avenge.

* * * * *

The Major settled on the stern seat for the long ride. He had his
thoughts, thoughts that set his jaws till they ached. The motors
roared as they coursed through a shifting panorama of islands, little
heavens of cool verdure as seen from the power boat which rode low,
rising and falling gently in the smooth swells which ribbed the
Celebes from horizon to horizon. From the low seaboard they looked
back upon a thin trail of white dashes which marked the wake their
speed had traced upon the tops of the oily undulations. Adams, the
mechanician, a slim, clean-cut young fellow, scarce glanced at Bronner
through the passing hours but hovered over his engines, absorbed in
their operation.

The night